Tag: want to read

Happy New Year (almost)! As I get ready to write my New Year’s Resolutions for 2025, I always like to look ahead to the books that will be coming out over the next year. Here are just a few of the ones that I’m excited for: 

1) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito (set to be released February 4)

A Victorian, gender-swapped American Psycho? The pitch for this one certainly has me intrigued. The book follows Winifred Notty as she plays the role of the perfect governess at Ensor House while occasionally giving in to her darkest impulses.

2) Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread by Leila Taylor (set to be released February 11)

It’s rare that I include a nonfiction book on this list, but I loved Leila Taylor’s Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul back in 2019 and just learned that she’s coming out with a second book. Sick Houses explores the role that houses and domestic spaces play in the horror genre, from Otranto to Amityville. I always enjoy Taylor’s analyses of horror and the Gothic and can’t wait to see what new insights she provides here.

3) The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (set to be released March 4)

I haven’t read any of Amal El-Mohtar’s solo works before, only the brilliant This Is How You Lose the Time War, cowritten with Max Gladstone, but this dark fantasy inspired by fairy lore and folk ballads sounds right up my alley.

4) The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (set to be released March 18)

I’ve been a big fan of Stephen Graham Jones’s works, from The Only Good Indians to My Heart Is a Chainsaw and I Was a Teenage Slasher, so of course I have to check out his next piece of gut-wrenching horror. I’m particularly excited to see that The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a historical novel that makes use of the found document trope. Presented as the diary of a Lutheran pastor and transcripts of interviews with the locals, the story takes place on a Blackfeet reservation in the year 1912. And it involves a vampire. What more could you need?

5) Overgrowth by Mira Grant (set to be released May 6)

Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire’s more horror-heavy pseudonym) has been one of my favorite horror writers since I first discovered her short fiction in Ellen Datlow’s various anthologies, but the last full-length novel written under this pseudonym that I read was her mermaid slasher Into the Drowning Deep—far and away my favorite book of 2018. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that we’re getting some new Mira Grant this year. Not just that, but it’s a tale of pernicious plants and alien invasions. I can’t wait to see how Mira Grant tackles these well-worn subgenres.

6) The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (set to be released July 15)

Since first reading Mexican Gothic in 2020, I’ve been gobbling up all of the Silvia Moreno-Garcia books I can get my hands on. This new one is a generation-spanning dark academia tale of women and witchcraft that centers on a graduate student named Minerva as she researches a mysterious horror author and the strange happenings that occurred at her school decades earlier.

7) America’s Most Gothic by Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes (set to be released July 29)

A second nonfiction book on the list! You know no yearly TBR is complete without a Leanna Renee Hieber book on the pile. This new one is a followup of sorts to this year’s A Haunted History of Invisible Women, both cowritten with Andrea Janes, founder of NYC’s spooky walking tour company Boroughs of the Dead. While Haunted History focused specifically on female-centered hauntings, America’s Most Gothic takes a broader look at real-life hauntings and how they relate to the tropes of Gothic literature. Absolutely the kind of book that this blog was made to review. 

8) The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas (set to be released August 19)

One of my favorite books I read this year was Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas, so I’m excited to see what’s next from her. Set in 1765, The Possession of Alba Díaz explores the history of Mexico’s silver mines, but things take a demonic turn when Alba flees her plague-ravaged village only to become infected with something even worse…. It’s also a love story and, as I discovered this year, I really do love the horromance combo!

9) Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (set to be released August 26)

I have not yet read any R.F. Kuang, despite seeing all the hype for Yellowface and Babel. But perhaps this new one will be the perfect place to start. Katabasis—or, a journey to the underworld—was one of the first literary tropes I remember ever learning about, a seed planted in my grade school education that would eventually grow into the interests that led me to create this blog. I’m excited to see how R.F. Kuang tackles this most ancient of literary tropes in a dark academia setting. Alice Law has sacrificed everything to be able to study magic with renowned Cambridge professor Jacob Grimes. So when a magical accident casts Grimes into Hell before he can even write Alice a recommendation letter, she has no choice but to go in after him. I’m seeing some parallels to Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent here, but perhaps it’s no surprise that some academics might equate part of the university experience with a journey through the fiery pits of hell….

10) Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell (set to be released October 7)

And lastly, one more plant horror book. I’m not familiar with this author, but when I saw that this was a queer reimagining of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1844 story “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” I knew I had to add it to the list! 

 

What’s on your reading list for 2025? Any good Gothic or horror books I didn’t include here? Are any of these going in your TBR pile? Let me know in the comments!

Happy 2024! First things first: as I mentioned at the end of last week’s post, I will be moving to an every-other-week posting schedule this year. But though I’ll be posting less often, I am still just as excited as always about all of the new books coming out this year! Here are just a few of the new releases I am most looking forward to:

1) The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan (set to be released January 9)

This Gothic horror novel is set off the coast of South Africa in a ruined mansion haunted by a djinn. When a young girl named Sana moves in with her father, she uncovers the estate’s long-buried secrets and a tragic tale of lost love. I always love to see classic Gothic tropes in new, unfamiliar settings. Continue reading Books I’m Excited for in 2024

Happy New Year! One of my favorite parts of this celebratory season is researching all of the exciting new books that will be coming out in the new year. This year, I found so many intriguing titles that I had trouble narrowing them down. Here are just a few of the books coming out in 2023 that are immediately going on my to-read list: 

1) Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo (set to be released January 10)

At last, we are getting a sequel to Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo’s dark academia novel about the occult societies of Yale! At the end of the first book, Alex learned that her mentor Darlington had disappeared through a portal into Purgatory and is still trapped on the other side. In this book, she embarks on an impossible rescue mission. Even the esteemed Lethe organization isn’t willing to risk their resources to save one of their own. But if anyone can get to hell and back with only her wits, some arcane texts, and a ragtag band of allies, it’s Alex Stern. And sure, why not throw in a series of unexplained murders for her to solve, as well?

2) Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones (set to be released February 7)

Here’s another sequel, this time to Stephen Graham Jones’s My Heart Is a Chainsaw, which I read last year. Book one introduced us to young Jade Daniels, a high schooler in the rural Idaho town of Proofrock who views the world through the lens of her favorite slasher movies. The first book left the reader wondering just how unreliable of a narrator Jade might be, right up until the bodies start dropping during a big party on Indian Lake. Unfortunately, Jade was left on the hook for these murders, and this second book picks up after she’s spent a few years in jail. Jade’s return to Proofrock happens to coincide with the escape of a local serial killer set on seeking vengeance.

3) The Foxglove King by Hannah F. Whitten (set to be released March 7) 

I haven’t read any of Hannah F. Whitten’s other books yet, but the description of this first book in a new YA fantasy series caught my eye. In it, a young woman with illicit death magic is thrust into court politics when the king needs her to solve a series of mass deaths.

4) Lone Women by Victor LaValle (set to be released March 21)

I heard Victor LaValle read a few pages from his manuscript of this book at the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Bar reading series in NYC last year and am excited for this book to come out so that I can finally read the rest! LaValle blends horror with western in this tale of a woman trying to outrun her secrets as she journeys from California to become a homesteader in Montana in the early twentieth century.

5) A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher (set to be released March 28)

I read my first T. Kingfisher book last year—What Moves the Dead—and absolutely fell in love. Now the author is back with her own spin on the haunted house genre, A House with Good Bones. In this Southern Gothic, a woman arrives at her mother’s house for an extended visit, only to discover that neither the house nor her mother are quite how she remembers them. The house has been painted a sterile white and is littered with unsettling objects like jars of teeth and creepy paintings. Meanwhile, her mother is nervous and jumpy but won’t explain why. Sounds like this family has some buried secrets that are ripe for discovering.

6) Witch King by Martha Wells (set to be released May 30)

Earlier in the pandemic, I absolutely devoured Martha Wells’s Murderbot books. But though I’ve only known her for her science fiction, I’m excited to check out her first fantasy novel in over a decade. And how could I resist the premise of a powerful, long-dead demon who is accidentally resurrected by a foolish lesser mage?

7) The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (set to be released June 27)

To my great shame, I have not yet read any of Tananarive Due’s works, despite how many times she’s been recommended to me. But this book looks like it would be a great place to start! The Reformatory explores the horrors of racism and injustice in a segregated reform school in Jim Crow Florida.

8) Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (set to be released July 18)

Since first picking up Mexican Gothic in 2020, I have yet to be disappointed by a Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel. Her newest book is a dark thriller that combines the horror cinema scene of 1990s Mexico City with Nazi occultism. When overlooked sound editor Montserrat and fading opera star Tristán are roped into helping a washed-up director finish a film allegedly shot using magic-imbued silver nitrate stock, they discover that sorcerers and magic are not just the stuff of movies….

9) Alecto the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (set to be released October 10)

Perhaps one of the most anticipated books coming out next year is the conclusion to Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series. Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, and Nona the Ninth have all been among my favorite books of the last three years, so I can’t wait to see what Alecto the Ninth has in store. Little information has been released yet about the finale to this epic science fantasy series, if the pattern of the previous books and the final chapter of Nona are anything to go by, this book will likely be told from the perspective of Alecto, the first entity to be resurrected by the Emperor Undying at the end of the world. And it seems like she has some scores to settle.

10) The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan (set to be released Fall of 2023)

I’m so excited to see more and more Jewish-inspired fantasy coming out these days. This first foray into adult fantasy by heretofore YA author Ariel Kaplan draws on Jewish folklore and the history of the Spanish Inquisition. Set in a fantasy world with parallels to fifteenth-century Spain, the story centers on Toba and Naftaly, who each have strange abilities and secrets. Toba can write faster than she can speak, in multiple languages, with both hands at the same time, while Naftaly has unusual dreams of square-pupiled strangers in a magical world. While struggling for their survival, both uncover hidden truths about their own identities, their histories, and the connections between the human and magical realms.

 

What books are on your reading list for 2023? Are you planning on reading any of those listed above? Did I miss any upcoming releases you think should be on my list? Let me know in the comments!

Now that 2021 is behind us, it’s time to look ahead to the new year. There’s no telling what 2022 will bring us, and I’ve been struggling with feeling optimistic as we head into another year of the pandemic, but at least one good thing is certain: there will always be new books! In fact, there are so many exciting new releases coming, that I was able to compile this year’s list of books to read in record time. Here are just a few of the books I’m looking forward to: Continue reading Books I’m Excited for in 2022

There are many things I’m looking forward to about 2021—mainly that the seemingly cursed year of 2020 is finally over! While I know that things won’t magically get better just because we’ve turned over a new calendar year, there’s just something refreshing about the feeling of a new start. And part of that new start means planning out a TBR list of new releases for this year! Here are some of the books I’m most excited for: Continue reading Books I’m Excited for in 2021